Assessing with Technology

Hey there!
I recently (as in *ahem* months ago kind of recently) found two new websites that are very effective for assessing.  The first one is Kahoot. I'll post about the other one later.

I LOVE Kahoot! It is a super fun, competitive, response game which you can do quizzes, discussions, or surveys on.  Students compete against each other and then you can download data immediately afterwards.  I used to use Clickers in the classroom, but what a pain! The batteries would be dead half the time or there wouldn't be enough clickers for all the students... All the students need here is any kind of electronic device that connects to the internet (iPods, iPads, cell phones, etc).

Another great component is the Public Kahoots option. You can use any other Kahoot that another teacher has created and there are some great ones. Just search specifically what you are looking for and then check the box on the right saying that you only want to see Kahoots that are made by teachers only.

I am a definite Kahooter and have even trained some of our staff in my district on it because I love it so much.  Check it out, you won't regret it!

Planbook.com - Online Lesson Planner

We all have different ways of writing lesson plans. Different grade levels have different needs. I used to be a handwritten lesson plan kind of gal. I had my cute lesson plan book and I used different colored pens - it was pretty fancy. Then I transitioned to a word document table kind of lesson plan similar to Jodi's at Fun in First Grade.  I just felt like it was all so much work writing out the standards and my learning targets and my accessing prior knowledge and bell work and... I could get on, but you got the idea, right?

Enter: Planbook.com

This has been my saving grace this year. You can develop your own custom schedule and everything is so user friendly on it. My school figured it out so that the more people that signed up, the better a deal we all got/the longer we got to use it for free. So try the free trial, if you like it, bribe all of your buddies to use it too!

Here's my week at a glance - ignore the sparse lesson plans. Sub day + early release = lame looking plans. To my defense, there is a lot you can't see because it's below the screen shot, like a lot. ;)

My categories on my lesson plans are Bell work, Learning Target, Preview of New Content/Identify Critical Information, Chunk Instructional Content, Record and Represent Knowledge, Group Process, Reflection, and Standards. Of course, you don't have to have all of those. That's the cool thing; you can add whatever you want to be in your lesson plans. If your school is anything like mine, we were basically told what we have to have in our lesson plans.

It's easy to backtrack and look at previous week's too. I picked this week to show you especially because you can merge your school calendar in with your plan book so it knows ahead of time when you have no school or early dismissals. I don't know about you, but it has happened to me on more than one occasion where I have lesson planned an awesome lesson that took me forever and then I realized, oh yeah, we have early release that day...

You can add standards so easily. They have everything! Common core, every state's content standards, you name it, they got it. I can easily pick out my science/social studies state standards while picking my ELA Common Core standards that I am supporting at the same time. Super easy!

My favorite buttons by far are the "Bump", "Bump Back", and "Extend" buttons (see above). We all have lessons that either go too long or we ended up having to do something different last minute and this makes it so easy! Before I used to have to copy and paste a bunch of stuff and then reformat it all, what a pain! Excuse me while I center myself from those bad memories.

Need to print them off or upload them to your school portal for your administrator? No problem? You can print them to PDF really easily.

Do you type your lesson plans on planbook.com? How do you write your lesson plans?

Just A Quickie

This week has been crazy! I did my student led conferences and will blog about that later this week. They went so great! I can't believe I haven't been doing them this whole time.
I am loving that it is Sunday and my house is quasi clean, my laundry is done, I have grocery shopped for the week, AND I still have today and tomorrow to just enjoy my days off.
Alright, now to get down to business here. I have a very wise instructional specialist who told me my first year of teaching that I only called on the kids whose hands were raised. I didn't even realize I was doing it!  I still do this accidentally, but to hold the kids accountable I have a few tips. 

Pick-a-Student Can:
I know a lot of us have these cans with the popsicle sticks in them. I had to label mine because I have two different classes.

Looks like these have seen better days! They get used a lot!

I also have a toilet paper tube in each one. I start off the day with all of the popsicle sticks in the center and as I call on the students I put them to the outside of the tube so I can control the probability a little bit. It works great!

Smart Board Spinner:
I am so fortunate to have a Smart Board and so I am able to use the spinner. The kids absolutely love this and it is so easy to create. I already have the tables numbered and then I number off the students according to their seats. If there aren't 4 to a table, then some students are assigned two numbers. This could easily be made into a spinner with the total number of students on it if you don't have tables.

Have a great rest of your 3 day weekend!

My New Little Friend

I get excited about little things.  And I also spend too much money on stupid things that nobody needs.  So without further ado, let me introduce you to my new wee little purchase.

Hello there...  Just a Yoda?  Or...

A USB flash drive!!   You know you're jealous...  Have a good weekend!